PolyCycle Day Twelve

Coulda predicted it.
Overslept.
I had a ton of crap planned for the early hours of today. Some of it work related, which is going to make my morning suck. Also, wanted to get all of the camping gear together for this weekend... I guess I have the early hours of Saturday. Back into reactionary mode. I hate reactionary mode.

"but missing a nap can cause a rapid crash that takes a while to recover from."

3am nap: ...continuation from day 11's 11pm nap. Woke up at 6. After seven hours of uninterrupted sleep.. you'd think that I would feel refreshed and awake. I feel like I have a hangover of epic proportions. Not the headache part, but the confusion and slurred thinking. Very pissed off at the moment. (06:34am) And though I know how to control/deal with this feeling. Right now, I want that anger. It's energy. Energy I can focus to forge into something useful. I feel like I need to be pissed off. (keep in mind that I feel less lucid than normal)
I've been informed that I did get out of bed after my 11pm nap. The Big question of the day is WTF did I do and when did I go back to bed?

7am nap: Seeing that I woke up only an hour previous... I think I'll skip this one.
11am nap: Restless and didn't get to sleep.
3pm nap: Skipping... Just not tired at all. Most of the office went home. But some of us still have lots of work to do. I really should go lay down, at least.
7pm nap: Restless. Did not really get to sleep. Too much on my mind.
11pm nap: Again..restless. Not napping (actual sleep) in the last 3 cycles leads me to believe that I did indeed sleep from 11pm yesterday to 6am this morning.

Seeing that it is Friday..
Now would be a good time to restart this experiment. Today was a very low mental and physical day. Probably the worst so far. Oddly, it happened on the day after I received the most sleep. Too much monkeying around with the system, for sure. You really have to admire people that do things like this. Not asking for your admiration, mind you, but pointing out an aspect of human society. We like to pounce on things that are not in the norm. If it's different, then it must be wrong. With my oversleeping today, I got the distinct impression from some people that since I was doing something wrong, that I deserved to fail. It was just and right. People are sheep.

Refresher. Naps will be as close to designated times as possible.
Missed nap times will be taken as soon as possible.
No caffeine.
No alcohol.
Naps are at 3, 7, and 11 A.M. and P.M.

Best Quote regarding my missing hours from 11pm to 6am. "Have you ever seen Fight Club?"
Runner up: "Dude, maybe you were out fighting crime!"

Quick Stats:
STR: 16
DEX: 10
CON: 7
INT: 6
WIS: 5
CHA: 12

Polycycle Day Eleven

3am nap: Nice. Good sleep. No recollection of dreams.
7am nap: Decent rest. Nothing to report really.
11am nap: Very Short. I awoke after only about 14 minutes. Feeling groggy and unmotivated for work. Though all of the other things that I want to be doing, I seem to have more energy for those things. It's only work if someone else wants you to do it?
3pm nap: Drama - no sleep. Work is backing up very quickly and my concentration is near zero.
7pm nap: Unable to take nap until 9pm. Argh. Once the responsibility of driving home is done. Exhaustion consumes me. Literally falling asleep sitting up.
11pm nap: Headed off to my nap at 10:50. The physical activity of walking up the stairs is tremendous. IF I can get some REM, I should be able to make it thru the night. FSM I hope I wake up at the alarm.

Best comment of the day: "Bullshit, you can't be doing that, you'd drop dead in 5 days."

Quick Stats:
STR: 14
DEX: 9
CON: 5
INT: 16
WIS: 16
CHA: 10

PolyCycle Day Ten

Dangit.

3 am nap.. was and extension of yesterdays 11pm nap. (read: I overslept) See previous post for the ensuing self doubt and missing alarm clock quandary. (4 hours)

7 am nap. Slept a little, but very lightly. The fact that I feel much better than I have since the experiment began leads me to believe that there are issues with either the Uberman Schedule, or my application of same. For sake of the experiment, I will continue the experiment with the assumption that it is my adherence faults that have thrown a monkey into the machine.
10 am update: The energy that I awoke with quickly dissipated. Instead of having energy and feeling slightly disconnected, I just feel like this has been a hellish week. And it's only Wednesday. Feeling burnt. Comparing this to what I've felt like the last few days, and my mental state.. this is a down turn.

11 am nap I decided to skip this nap to ensure that I will be sufficiently tired enough to get back on schedule. Don't ask where that logic came from. I'm not sure. After lunch, I began to feel unwell. The closest I can get to describing the feeling is what you feel like the day before you realize that you're sick. I don't think that I'm getting sick, but rather I'm messing with some already screwed up sleeping schedules.

3 pm nap. Despite feeling like a zombie, I was unable to really get to sleep. My motivation and outlook on this project is rather low. I'm hoping that this is a reaction to the oversleeping. Not being one that is easily discouraged for long, I will push forward with this little game.

7 pm nap Found the damn alarm clock. It was under the bed. (I have no idea). I also tested the length of the alarm and found it to be one minute. :-( This nap was.. ok.. Not feeling that great. I'm quite certain that I did not reach REM, and I feel unrested.

11 pm nap Yawn. Almost.. almost a good nap. Again, not feeling all that well. Feeling spent and over tired. I fear that this is going to be a rather long night. Still quite foggy in the head.


I spent a bit of time looking over the previous 9 days worth of information. It is quite apparent that I, as usual, jumped into something with both feet and only the shadow of a plan. I've sketched out a more stable plan and have recommitted to this project.
Now, to make it through the night.

Oh, intersting side note, I've averaged 20.6 hours of awake time for the last 9 days.

Quick Stats:
STR: 16 - For some reason I feel like I'm gaining muscle mass (no strength training has occured)
DEX: 14
CON: 16 That fact that I can pull this off warrants me a 16, dontcha think?
INT: 15 (questionable)
WIS: 15 (questionable)
CHA: 10 I'm handy, that should tell you something.

PolyCycle Day Nine

Ok.. Here's something that I've noticed.
When you wake up from REM, or the alarm goes off.
Get the hell up.
If you don't, that next cycle will be a long one as your body tries to go back to sleep. I don't know the remedy if you don't get up right away. I lallygagged after my postponed 11pm nap...lay in bed for an extra 20 minutes. I am thinking of throwing in an extra sleep cycle to cover.

4am - I did a double cycle. I slept for 20 minutes.. got up. then lay back down for an additional 20 minutes. Well, it is an experiment.

7am nap.. was postponed a bit as I was on my way to work. Napped a little in the car.

(No, I was not driving!)

Feeling a bit disconnected today.. not sure what's up. Maybe it was seeing a picture of my homeland yesterday (inside joke). Despite that feeling, I seemed to be quite productive, reducing my e-mail in box to zero. Fireworks should go off every damn time that happens.

11am nap postponed until noon. Didn't seem to fall asleep. Might have too many things on my mind. It didn't feel like I was laying down for 25 minutes though. I still have that slightly disconnected feeling. More precisely, I'm feeling like a slacker. I don't want to be working. I want to read this cool book that I have on loan from an intriguing mind. I have Site's to build. Camping gear to assemble. TV to watch.

3pm nap - Simply dropped right off, again waking unassisted after about 25 minute.
The groggy feeling has continued. Very similar to the mid afternoon slump I was accustomed to as a monophasic sleeper.

7pm nap was pushed back to 9pm. I began to feel increasingly tired and yet was unable to sustain any level of sleep during the nap.

11pm nap. Overslept - which does not surprise me at all. Awoke at 4am. Bad news: Frustration. Good News: I feel great. Go figure. Not only did I sleep through my battery powered-place-it-on-the-pillow alarm that I purchased for this experiment, but I slept through the regular bedside alarm. To me, that signals extreme exhaustion. Of note, not only did I sleep through my portable alarm, I was unable to even find the thing. The clock is missing. .. .. WTF? Did I eat it? Sleepwalk the thing to the trash outside by the garage?

I'm beginning to feel that success of this sleep cycle is highly reliant on one's ability to maintain the rigid schedule fairly closely. Since that has been an issue with me, I am having mixed results. I chose the 6 times 20 or Uberman sleep cycle for it's lager benefits of simple and synchronous schedule and the promise of 21-22 hours of productive time. At this moment, I'm definitely feeling that the schedule is too rigid and unnatural to be sustainable for me.
This leaves me in a bit of a quandary. Do I slog through and continue the experiment, or do I do as many other do and modify the sleep times and frequency to something more asynchronous, and sacrifice some of the productive time for a schedule that is more easily adapted to. Perhaps the Everyman Schedule (core sleep consisting of 3-4 hours of sleep at night and 3x 20-30minute naps morning, midday, and evening) I have unwittingly followed a schedule very similar to the Everyman version for about 3 months. Back into the corner of have too much to do and too little time in which to do it, I was working until my mind began to shut down. I know that the Everyman Schedule is something that I can do, and with a bit more understanding and perhaps awareness of what I'm doing, I might not feel like the walking dead while doing it. .. ..

On the other hand, I feel that after only a week, despite the obvious challenges, I've not given my body/mind sufficient time to adjust to the Uberman (6x20 schedule). Today (8/28) was a particularly challenging day.

Please use the poll (upper right hand of this page - YMMV) and let me know what you think I should do. In the meantime, I plan on returning to the Uberman (6x20min) Plan.

Polyphasic Sleep - A primer

Ok.. So I realize that this experiment seems half baked and insane to many of you. With that in mind, I'd like to touch on a few point and see if I can demonstrate a little bit of reason behind what I'm doing.

DISCLAIMER
Despite decades of intense research, scientists still have only clues about sleep function. Because sleep is heterogeneous, there are various theories none of which predominates.

In humans, there are two general categories of sleep. Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM)

Lets talk about NREM first.
NREM account for roughly 85% of the time spent sleeping and is broken down into 4 stages:

*N1- Drowsey Sleep
*N2- The brain emits short bursts of activity and it is belived that the brain is trying to keep tranquil. ~40% of NREM sleep.
*N3- I like to call this dark territory.. ~3% of NREM sleep occurs here, but this is where bedwetting, night terrors, sleep walking, and sleep talking occur.
*N4- Usually > than 50% of NREM sleep is here. This is the deep sleep.

REM Sleep:

REM Sleep or R is marked by intense dreams and is linked to circadian rhythm.

The general theory behind polyphasic sleep is that REM sleep is largely responsible for the mental regenerative effects of sleep. After an initial period of sleep deprivation, one adapts a schedule of 6 even spaced naps of 20 minutes. This yields ~2 hours of REM as compared to the 1.5 hours for a 'normal' sleep pattern.
So the very short comparison goes like this:
Monophasic Sleep
16 hours awake time
8 hours sleep time
1.5 hours of regenerative sleep

Polyphasic (Uberman Version) Sleep
22 hours awake time
2 hours sleep time
2 hours regenerative sleep

Those are rough numbers, as I don't think that the entire time I'm asleep, I'm in REM.

I've suffered from insomnia for many years and gone months on less than 4 hours average sleep a night... I'm now getting about 2 hours a night and feel better than I have in years!

PolyCycle Day Eight

I'd hate to jinx it, but I think I'm through the dark woods.

11-3am stretch was not terribly productive. I've too much muck in the synapses.
Despite the alcohol and caffeine intake, my 3am nap was quick and refreshing. Very little time to fall asleep and feel into a dream quickly.

The time from 3am to 7am has been the hardest for me thus far. This cycle, has been the easiest so far. I am tired, but functioning much like the afternoon slump that I used to have around 2pm before.
I skipped my 7pm nap yesterday.. so I imagine that when I don't- my mental clarity will be much improved. This is the first 3to7am cycle that I've been able to be on the computer.

11am nap was fantastic... Multiple times in the dream where I was moving my hands to block a play fight strike or catch something... and my arms actually moved. But I didn't drop out of the dream.. I could slide back in, even though I was aware that I was dreaming.
Very Cool. Who needs drugs?
I have the definite feeling of a caffeine high after my nap. This is that 9th cup feeling. Buzzing.... and on 20 minutes of sleep.. Whoo hoo. Is this what it feels like to get some good deep sleep?

I received a request today for more information about my mental state and any physical changes, and any changes in diet or eating habits. I will try to incorporate that in future blogs.

Today, I feel very calm and centered, for the most part. My typing speed in near peak and I'm cranking work out left and right. I feel like I'm thinking at a higher level, but that is purely subjective. I'm quite certain that this is the quickest my brain has moved in the last week.

Small work crisis caused me to skip my 3pm nap. I still feel like I have energy to spare. I will nap before I drive home. (Seems to be a concern of some folks)

Nice 3pm nap at 6pm, then drove home. No sense of sleepiness.

Side note- Online flash based learning solutions are pretty boring.

Mental Status: A little foggy in the morning
Dexterity: Above average. Typing speed is great today.
Comprehension: How would I know what I'm not comprehending. Good, other than Emotional IQ
Agitation: hmm... High, but no more than normal.
Hunger/eating: Slight problem with habit eating. Hunger has been reduced, but eating out of habit has led to fairly even weight.
Nap Locations: 3am Bed, 7am Bed, 11am Quiet Room, 3pm pushed back to 6pm , 7pm-Skipped , 11pm-pushed back to midnight so I could check out the lunar eclipse! .

PolyCycle Day Seven

Dagnabbit!
Overslept from my 3am nap.
Skipping a nap is bad bad. (but I'm now following a form of Everyman Polyphasic, right?) I remember the alarm going off, and turning it off. I did the fatal "I'll get up in one minute".

3 hours later....

Dagnabbit!

I'm more than a little pissed off.
This experiment is troublesome.

Still.. I'll say that it's a net gain.

Feeling, generally un-motivated.

11am nap produced a very intense dream.
I was laying on my side in the first class birth of airplane. The nose of the plan pitched wildly down causing someone to scream and wake me up. I could hear the jet engines strain a whine as the plane rapidly nosed down to earth. I was able to pull myself from the dream to find my self in the same position in my bed. With my heart still pounding, I eased myself back in to the dream. Through the few windows that the shades were up, I could see the shadows and images of skyscrapers.
I awoke.
This is the first time that I know about that I was able to pull myself from a dream and then reinsert myself right back in.
Too bad it was a plane crash dream. :-0

For this afternoon, we had scheduled a pool party. I knew that this would pose a few problems. Good food and limited, and possible sabotaged, nap time.

3pm nap was met with limited success. No known dreaming, but wonderful sense of being recharged.

7pm nap was inconvenient in many ways. Made the decision to skip it, fully away that this has had negative consequences in the past week.

Also of note, I consumed caffeine and alcohol today. (might be relevant later)

It was very interesting talking to some people about this little experiment that I'm doing. Some look at how I might just be getting more REM than normal and press on with the idea that the human body adapts to change. Others are just waiting for me to crash and burn. Which is more motivating, those that see the logic you're using to make decisions, or those that have already seen you fail?

11pm nap was restless. "Too much think!" as Mr. Hong would say.

Still trying to figure out when day one ends and day two begins... I no longer have the long sleep cycle to help with the seperation.

Maarburg

Polycycle Day Six

After over sleeping this morning.
(It's getting hard to delinaite when the day starts)
I knew that I had to get back on schedule as quick as possible.

I lay down for my my 7am nap at 8am and set the alarm for 30 minutes.

11am nap seemed ok.

Missed the 3pm nap. (hmm.. this seems to be a issue.)

Very groggy. I took my 3pm nap at 5:30, and skipped my 7pm nap. (recipe for oversleeping?)

Even with friends over, slipping away for a 1/2 hour possed no problem. Except that I didn't seem to wake up. I was very uncomfortable and restless while very drowsy at the same time. A nice hot shower woke me up and the rest of the cycle was fine.


I'm afraid that I'm going to oversleep
Maarburg

PolyCycle Day Five

The previous night cycle went smoother.
Awake and tired, but less like a zombie.
It was hard to feel motivated to do anything in the 11-3am and 3-7am phases. My body is still trying to do what it's done for decades and lay down.
Talk about a long standing habit.

I decided that the 3-7am phase needs to be filled with physical activity. At lest for now. At 1am I decided that I would start to compile some recipes and begin cooking the days meals. That would allow me to greater control over my nutrition (which is quite pathetic at the moment), and assist in eating Paleo style. I browsed through some books and pulled out a few recipes. At 2am I went to the store and bought food.

There is a lot of good parking at 2am. The cashier was real talkative.
Got home and chilled in front of the TV for a few moments, then took my 3am nap.

I cooked up two new recipes. One good, one bland as hell. Packed them and tossed them in the fridge.

I managed to get into work for my 7am nap and that went good. I had a coffee on the way to work. (this might play out as important later in the day
My 11am nap was great. Fell asleep quickly and awoke before the end of the MP3 that I'm using.

I was unable to get to my 3pm nap. Work piled up too quickly. It was 5pm before I got to it.
I grabbed a Diet Coke (again.. caffeine), and went back to my desk.
When 7pm rolled around I didn't feel tired. I know that I should have napped anyway, if anything to reinforce the schedule. Around 9pm my body seemed to be shutting down. I managed to stay vertical until 11pm. Since we were out and about, I tried to sneak my nap in the car. Not good. Too many noises that peeked into my mind. Ended up not sleeping much at all.
when the 3am nap time rolled around I could barely keep my eyes open, and I could feel that I needed to get back on schedule. As I lay down, my mind seemed to snap to attention. Argh. I tried to nap and nothing came of it. I got back up and worked on a few other things, intending to try again shortly.
I lay down again at 4am.
And promptly fell asleep.
Not waking until 6:40.
Argh.


I think the contributing factors are the caffeine and the delayed and missed nap.



Maarburg

PolyCycle Day Four

While PolyNapping, I'm now catching the sense of when I should be waking up.
I also have totally lost track of time. I've quite grateful for the little day notification display on my watch..

Some of you might know about my fixation with the number 12. This morning, around 4:30, I realized that my day consists of 12 cycles. 6 waking and 6 napping.
That makes me happy.

Total exhaustion. Eyelids feel like lead and it's very easy to nod off while sitting.
Even through this, I've noticed a huge jump in the amount of work I've been able to accomplish. Mind you, that I've left the heavier thinking for this morning. Though, at this moment, I'm not sure why. I'm more tired now that when I made the decision to post pone the thinking work.

Driving into work today is going to be an exercise.

I'd kill for a Venti SF Vanilla Latte.

CycleJump

Drive in wasn't too bad.

I might just be past the bad stuff. I feel like I just really tired, as opposed to really tired and slightly drunk. Manual dexterity is reduced. As is memory. Typing speed is very limited... probably 70% of normal.
I had a hell of a time spelling "Country" earlier today..

Time for my sleep phase.
(I really should name each of the phases)


Maarburg

PolyCycle Day Three

Best laid plans......

11pm sleep from Day Two lasted a bit longer then planned.
Four hours longer to be a bit more precise. Spousal Unit thought that I had abandoned my crazy sleep dep fetish. When I woke up I was a tired as I've been in a very long time. To tired to be angry that I was back at square one. Perhaps this is going to be harder than I expected.

ZenLC did bring up a rather interesting point, yesterday. Something about planning to start this experiment on the weekend. Obviously, he's getting more sleep and has a higher cognitive output than I do. (Sleep Dep might not have anything to do with that at all, actually)
The real kick in the balls about sleeping thru my two morning productivity cycles is that I had work, very time sensitive work, planned for that time.
Arriving at work this morning, completely spent and in desperate need for caffeine, I was plagued by thoughts of postponing this experiment until the weekend.

After a bit of mental debate (What? You don't argue with the voices in your head?), I decided to slog on. By 10am I had developed a massive headache, quickly attributed to caffeine withdrawals. My 11am sleep was ok, but again.. unsatisfying.

After a nice lunch and a bit more work, and a green tea (containing my chemical dependency of choice), the headache dissipated to a reasonable level, and my 3pm sleep was much better.

7pm nap taken in the car, outside a restaurant. Didn't get a whole lot of real sleep.

11pm nap got bumped to midnight. This nap was nice. I dropped into a deep sleep and popped out about 17 minutes later.

I am still feeling very drugged and a little twitchy. The simple fact that I've had the mental facilities to write a (hopefully) coherent blog and the time to do so is worth this grogginess.

I hope it goes away, none the less.

Maarburg

PolyCycle Day Two

Be forewarned that I will quickly stop deliniating the blog by Days..

After missing two cycles and being in a tremendous amount of pain, I was looking forward to my 11am sleep.
It was a little rough, hard to sleep fully. I'm sure that I did not quite reach REM sleep.
The 3pm sleep was rather nice, and even refreshing.
Don't get me wrong, I certainly feel like I've spent the last few night drinking too much and too long. That fuzzy thinking feeling is very thick right now.
I took the 7pm nap in the car and was again insufficient in some way to produce a refreshed feeling.
I definitely feel like the walking dead.

Maarburg

PolyCycle Day?? One

Yesterday (20070820), I decided to investigate first hand the concept of Polyphaisc Sleep patterns.

Last night, I consumed caffeine for the last time, for.. um.. awhile. I pushed thru the sleepiness and continued to work. This 'pushing thru' is normal and I have been doing this for many months now. It seemed more difficult, as I could not look forward to a good 3-4 hours of dead time. All that was in store for me was a 20-30 minute catnap. Followed by the reading of Steve Pavlina's Polyphasic Blog, most of which I had read before.

After a brief look at my daily routine, and thinking I really need to get a life, I decided on 3, 7, and 11 as my sleep times.

Day one.. got off to a rather lousy start. I poured myself a large glass of cranberry juice, cut 50% with water. Unfortunately, what I thought was 100% cranberry juice turned out to be mostly apple juice. I don't do well with apple juice.

That nights 11pm nap went ok, but from about 1am my stomach became a battlezone. No chance for the 3am or 7am sleeps.

Observations so far... hmm.. seems a lot like when I was working myself to death a few months ago. I survived that (mostly), so this shouldn't be all that different.


Maarburg

Are there enough hours in the day?

Caution: Hidden Horror film references made in this blog
It's been a rough year.. Good and Bad.

For the last few months.. there has been an overwhelming feeling of having more responsibilities than I have time. Long story, short version. There are many many things that I'd like to be doing, and mostly I am just working. Very little of the Good Stuff going on. (clue background image of Wendy Torrance finding the Jack Torrance's new novel.. comprised of the many ways one can type: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.") I did a little mental list of all the things that I'd like to be spending 15 minutes a day* on.. and shook my head. Who was I fooling. I don't even have time to do the things I have to do, let alone the things I want to do.

*On my first trip to Kauai, I picked up a hitchhiker. He talked about his friend that wanted to learn Italian. This friend spent 15 minutes every day on it, and had outstanding success.

So, before I start running around the office channeling Tony out of my index finger.... ..
-
I am again toying mercilessly with the concept of Polyphasic Sleep. I've not been one for sleeping much anyway, and getting 5 out of the hoped for 6 REM* cycles promised by Uberman Polyphasic sleep patterns will increase my REM sleep by probably 3 fold.

*Uberman Sleep pattern is (roughly) taking 6 naps for 30-40 minutes spaced evenly through the day. Mine will be at 3, 7, 11, 15, 19, and 23.

I'm going mad as it is.. might as well go mad trying to accomplish something ridiculous, right.

BTW.. I blame ZenLC for providing me the courage to attempt this.

I may or may not blog my experience.
(I might get caught up on life stuff first!)

8 hours of sleep.. Bah.. for the weak I say.


-Maarburg